THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE OF THE CONGO.
WE suspect that the failure of the first attempt to found an India upon the Congo will in no long time be publicly admitted. Bing Leopold IL, who, though he inherits some of the Coburg kingeraft, is not a really able man, deceived by confidence in his own great wealth and by the incurable Continental idea that any- body can make money in the tropics if he is only hard enough, undertook an enterprise wholly beyond his resources, and by making revenue instead of good govern- ment his end, spoiled the whole effect of his first successes. The Congo Free State, covering a million square miles, that is, as large as India, and containing a population supposed to exceed forty-two millions, was committed by Europe to his charge in absolute sovereignty, and at first there appeared to be no resistance. Steamers and tele- graphs and stations are trifles to a millionaire, and there were any number of Belgian engineers and young officers and clerks eager for employment. The weak point of the undertaking, inadequate resources, soon, however, became patent to the world. The King had the disposal of a few white troops, but they were only Belgians, who suffer greatly in tropical warfare, and his agents had to form an acclimatised army "on the cheap." They engaged, therefore, the fiercest blacks tbev could find, most of them cannibals, paid them by tolerAing license, and then endeavoured to maintain their own authority by savage discipline. The result was that the men, as events have proved, and as the King seems in his apologia to admit, were always on the verge of mutiny, and that the native tribes, with their advantages of position, numbers, and knowledge of the forest and the swamps, proved at least as good fighters as most of the forces of the Congo State. So great, however, is the intellec- tual superiority of white men, so immeasurable the advantage involved in any tincture of science, that the Belgians might still have prevailed but for the absolute necessity of obtaining money. They could not wait for the growth of resources under scientific taxation such as will follow Mr. Mitchell Innes's financial reforms in Siam. but attempted to obtain them from direct taxation and monopolies, especially that of rubber. Resistance was punished with a savage cruelty, which we are quite ready to believe was not the original intention of the Belgians, but which could not be avoided when the only mode of punishing a village was to let loose black cannibals on it to work their will, and which gradually hardened even the Europeans, and the consequence was universal disloyalty. The braver tribes fought with desperation, the black troops were at once cowed and attracted by their opponents, the black porters and agri- culturists became secret enemies, all were kept in order by terror alone, and we all see the result. The Belgians are beaten ; their chiefs, Baron Dhanis and Major Lothaire, are believed to be prisoners ; and the vast territories of the far interior, whence alone rubber can now be obtained, are already lost. Black soldiers have mutinied in the field, and it is doubtful, if the rebels press _on, whether all signs of Belgian sovereignty will not disappear. The King, with a coolness which will be called courage or obstinacy according to the critic's view of his character, declares that he shall go on, and that all will be recovered ; but we believe he deceives himself. The administration on the spot is tainted by the history of its cruelties and its failures, and there are not the means in Brussels of replacing it by competent officials, or of supplying them with the considerable means required for what must now be a deliberate recon- quest. If no change is made, the internal never-ending war will go on, all progress will be brought to a final end, and the mere necessity of getting money out of the limited area it is now possible to reach will make taxation so severe that we shall hear either of the depopulation of whole districts, or of a murderous popular insurrection on the St. Domingo scale and plan. The greatest experi- ment ever made in Africa has in fact failed, and failed discreditably. Under these circumstances it seems clear that the only reasonable course is to allow a Great Power to step forward, buy out the Belgians, and recommence the experiment from the beginning. The best Power for the purpose would be the British, because we could enter the vast derelict territory from both sides, because we could employ both Soudanese and Indians in the work of pacification without relaxing their discipline, and because we under- stand how to levy taxes without oppression, and without destroying all the springs of industry. Even negroes will grow rich under our rule, and we alone of the peoples have the art—it is a very strange one—of restraining despotism within the precise limits beyond Which it pro- duces instinctive popular resistance. We have never so irritated a people, not even the Matabele, that they would not accept our pay. It is, however, better that we should not accept the Congo. We have the Nile, the Niger, and the Zambesi already on our hands, and reck- lessly profuse as we are of civil lives, the demand for com- petent and esurient lads, though the supply never ceases, may yet exhaust our resources of educated men. Moreover, it is not well, at all events until the English-speaking races have grown to their full stature, to seem to wish to monopolise the subject regions of the world, or to make of our wealth an apparently immovable barrier to the natural ambitions of all the hungry in Europe. It will be far better to let the French have the State, on condition that they cede to us the strip of land necessary for com- munication between the Cape and Cairo, and settle at once and finally the two or three other matters now in dispute between the countries. With its million square miles of area and its forty-two millions of population the Colonial party will feel that they have at least acquired an estate equal to their ambition and capable of rewarding the energies they believe their people to possess. The patronage will be very large, and, owing to the vastness of the area, very imposing, -while the estates to be sold for planting and general exploitation will make Paris and Marseilles feel suddenly enriched. The French, too, will govern fairly well. They have not the vivifying power of the English, but they build handsome tropical cities, they establish and obey reasonable Codes, and, though their hands are not clean in the matter of forced labour, they are willing to suppress slavery. Above all, they do not hate the negroes as the Germans do, or despise them as the British and Americans do, but in Guadeloupe and in the French Congo show a disposition, when they are tractable, to treat them as rather absurd children. They have good black soldiers and Arabs to employ in pacifica- tion, and, though terribly jealous of trade rivalry, they do not object to their subjects growing rich. Their rule will, in fact, be a great advance on the savagery which formerly prevailed upon the Congo, and a still greater advance upon the Belgian regime, which, unless many independent reporters are in a conspiracy to deceive, is in principle the ancient rule made more terrible and cruel by the use of the irresistible instruments of civilisa- tion. A Congo savage was governed by savages ; he is now governed, as Macaulay said of the Bengalees under Verelst, by evil genii.
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